Waste Management Problem in Lagos

Waste Management Problem in Lagos

Cities like Lagos, in Nigeria, face the problems of rapid expansion and the increase in population. An undoubtedly increasing pressure on the facilities of infrastructure has been brought by these phenomena. The basic facilities are transport, medical, accommodation, food, education, which is necessary for every citizen in the country. There are numerous problems being faced by the Local Government in Lagos. The numerous problems range from water problem, waste management, poor road conditions and electricity outages. An area where the current system has been unable to cope with the huge generation and heaping of waste loads is the, obvious and stressful, area of waste management. The controlled and rapid urbanization that is experienced by Lagos, along with a high growth of the population makes it unavoidable for some specific types of wastes to be generated in large quantities. These wastes include food wastes, hospital waste, etc. These wastes are unavoidable sometimes, food waste from the restaurants, hotels, homes are in large quantity and these edible items should be properly dump or use for animal's food. The hospital waste is unavoidable like the equipment used for operation, body parts, drips, injections etc. These all waste product should be dumped properly or buried under the earth or dumped into the area away from humans. The rate of urbanization of Nigeria, as a country, is astonishing. An increase from 20% in 1970 to 38% in 1990 in the share of its population, that was urban, got revealed. This included over 40 million living in towns and cities out of the total 110 million. Of the 40 million of the share of population, a big proportion of this amount lives in Lagos. The surprisingly big proportion of population in the city has excessive loads on facilities and utilities such as road, waste, sanitation and management. The diversity of problems that normally go with the major unmet loads, are provoked by the happening of their environmental troubles and is dependent on the capacity or incapacity of the resident to address (Robert, 1999). The problems in Lagos include water, air and noise pollution and waste management. The most severe of the environmental problem in Lagos is of waste management. Most of the wastes are unavoidable like food and hospital. The overpopulation in Lagos also contributes in food and hospital wastes, which should be properly dumped because it can cause different diseases. Solid waste generation is an element of every human doings or process flow. Contribution to the streams of solid waste is by the entire population of a region or country by the activities at work or at home. Just like the other countries that belong to third world, Nigeria has similar trends of solid waste characteristics, generation and sources. Most of the solid waste includes material from the industries, water treatment plants, discarded appliances and vehicles, domestic refuse etc. These waste generated by the industries, treatment plants, and domestic garbage (Pitt, 2002). Like other developing countries, the data ...